ABSTRACT
The norm for a minority language in a prolonged contact situation is eventually language shift — it might be over a few generations or a few hundred years. In the case of Pennsylvania German, however, shift has not taken place either in Canada or in the US, at least among the Anabaptist communities. Here we have an instance of a non-standard, non-written language of no prestige — associated with rurality, lack of sophistication and with no official recognition (to the extent that it is even banned in the school playground). Yet this is a language that has been holding its own well and truly against English and has been doing so for nearly 400 years. This is one persistent language and the secrets of its survival technique are instructive for helping us to identify the socio-cultural and linguistic conditions under which survival and maintenance are likely to occur.
